THE  ETERNAL  LIFE 


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HUGO  MUNSTERBERG 


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THE    ETERNAL    LIFE.     i6mo,  85  cents,  net.    Postage 

extra. 
PSYCHOLOGY  AND  LIFE.    Crown  8vo,  $2.00. 

AMERICAN   TRAITS.     From  the  Point  of   View  of  a 
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HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 
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THE    ETERNAL    LIFE 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

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THE    ETERNAL 
LIFE 


BY 


HUGO   MUNSTERBERG 


BOSTON    AND    NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

<®bt  $Wttr?'i&e  $re?£,  Camfcribge 
1905 


COPYRIGHT  1905  BY  HUGO  MUNSTERBERG 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  April  1Q05 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 


THE  ETERNAL  LIFE 

COME,  dear  friend,  sit  down  here 
by  the  open  fire.  It  was  cold 
and  penetrating  out  there  at  the  bu- 
rial ;  —  come,  warm  your  hands,  and 
let  us  talk  of  the  companion  we  have 
lost.  How  often  he  sat  with  me  here 
through  the  long  winter  evenings, 
and  brightened  my  dusky  library  with 
his  genial  humor  and  good  cheer ! 
We  shall  not  hear  his  voice  again. 
I  cannot  express  how  deeply  I  am 
stricken  by  this  loss,  —  I  know  only 
that  I  shall  never  again  sit  here  with- 
out grieving  that  our  friend's  life,  with 
all  its  sweetness  and  inner  beauty,  was 
so  short.  Do  you  remember  that 
summer  morning  when  you  met  him 


2        THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

here  for  the  first  time  ?  Who  thought 
that  the  November  day  of  final  part- 
ing would  come  so  soon?  Will  you 
not  sit  down  and  talk  with  me  ?  Why 
do  you  hesitate  ? 

Ah,  I  understand,  —  I  see  it  all  in 
your  clouded  eyes  and  brow.  Your 
eyes  say  that  though  we  are  in  per- 
fect accord  on  every  practical  ques- 
tion, yet  our  ways  part  here.  You 
do  hope  to  see  our  friend  again  in 
the  time  to  come.  When  the  minis- 
ter beside  the  open  grave  promised 
a  happy  meeting  yonder,  I  saw  you 
bend  your  head  as  if  the  preacher 
spoke  the  language  of  your  heart. 
I  thought  I  had  mistaken  you ;  now 
I  see  that  I  was  right  and  that  my 
words  must  have  wounded  you.  I 
know  you  must  recoil   as  if  from  an 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE         3 

atheist  who,  without  creed  or  belief 
of  his  own,  seeks  to  destroy  your 
faith  in  immortality.  You  look  on 
me  as  a  man  of  science  who  cares  for 
naught  that  he  cannot  see  and  touch 
and  weigh  and  measure  —  to  whom 
eternal  life  is  an  empty  tale.  Is  it  not 
strange  what  close  friends  two  men 
can  be  who  yet  are  strangers  in  their 
deepest  thoughts? 

But   come  —  I  cannot  let  you  go 
now  until  you  have  heard  my  defense. 

I  arnnefcjipr  skepfir  nnrafhpigf,  and  I 


believe  in  eternal  life. —  Before  this 
wood  fire  has  burned  out,  you  shall 
know  me  better.  We  shall  not  con- 
vince each  other,  but  we  owe  a  better 
mutual  understanding  to  the  memory 
of  our  friend.  It  is  not  surprising  that 
you  mistook  me  for  one  of  those  who, 


4        THE   ETERNAL    LIFE 

in  the  pride  of  modern  science,  have 
only  ridicule,  or,  at  best,  indifference, 
for  every  thought  of  a  beyond.  All 
about  us,  indeed,  we  see  the  men  with 
a  scientific  view  of  the  world  and  the 
men  with  a  religious  view  of  the  world 
in  two  sharply  separated  camps.  The 
scientist  may  attend  church,  but  his 
religion  is  an  empty  function  ;  it  does 
not  penetrate  his  life.  And  the  church- 
man may  gain  all  knowledge,  and  yet 
the  scientific  view  of  the  world  does 
not  shape  his  universe.  It  seems  as  if 
science  and  religion  could  no  longer 
be  harmonized.  And  yet,  my  friend, 
I  feel  that  they  belong  together :  the 
deepest  truth  of  science  and  the  most 
profound  religion  are  compatible. 

It  is  true  I  am  a  man  of  science. 
Here  in  this  library  it  hardly  needs  to 


THE    ETERNAL    LIFE         5 

be  declared.  The  microscopes  at  the 
desk  tell  the  tale,  and  every  book  on 
the  shelves  affirms  it.  It  is  my  pas- 
sion and  my  delight  to  throw  my  little 
energy  into  the  search  for  the  laws 
which  control  this  universe  of  matter 
and  the  life  of  the  mind.  The  laws 
of  the  physical  and  of  the  psychical 
world  impress  me  daily  more  and 
more  by  their  wonderful  clearness  and 
their  majestic  power.  Science  does  not 
mean  to  me  the  answer  to  questions 
of  curiosity  ;  it  is  to  me  not  a  mass  of 
disconnected  information,  but  the  cer- 
tainty that  there  is  no  change  in  this 
universe,  no  motion  of  an  atom,  and 
no  sensation  in  a  consciousness,  which 
does  not  come  and  go  absolutely  in 
accordance  with  natural  laws,  —  the 
certainty  that  nothing  can  exist  out- 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

side  of  the  gigantic  mechanism  of 
causes  and  effects.  Necessity  moves 
the  stars  in  the  sky,  and  necessity 
moves  the  emotions  in  my  mind.  No 
miracle  can  break  these  laws,  can  push 
a  single  molecule  from  its  path,  or 
create  a  sensation  in  a  mind,  when  the 
body  does  not  work,  when  the  brain 
no  longer  functions. 

'I  see  by  the  compression  of  your 
lips,  my  friend,  and  the  impatient  play 
of  your  fingers  that  I  am  confessing 
just  what  you  suspected.  Does  not  — 
I  read  the  question  in  your  face  — 
does  not  all  this  entail  the  admission 
that  there  is  no  God  and  no  immor- 
tality, that  the  physical  universe  is  the 
whole  of  reality,  and  that  in  the  mil- 
lions of  years  to  come  no  mind  will  ever 
awake  when  once  the  body  is  the  prey 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 


of  worms  ?  But  I  did  not  say  that  this 
was  my  last  word ;  you  heard  my  first 
word  only.  Too  many  stop  here,  be- 
cause they  take  the  challenge  for  the 
fight,  but  you  and  I  must  go  on. 

Science !  How  easily  is  its  great 
mission  misunderstood  !  How  often 
scored  by  its  opponents  for  claims 
which  it  does  not  make,  how  often 
by  its  own  friends  pushed  forward  to 
a  ground  where  it  must  fail  altogether 
and  disastrously !  To  honor  science" 
means  to  respect  its  limitations :  sclh 
ence  is  not  and  cannot  be,  and  ought 
never  to  try  to  be,  an  expression  of 
ultimate  reality.  When  science  seeks 
to  be  a  philosophy,  it  not  only  over- 
steps its  rights,  but  weakens  at  the_ 
same  time  its  own  position.  Every- 
one who  feels  a  lack  of  inspiration  in 


8        THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

this  mass  of  dead  material  substances 
begins  then  to  look  out  for  small  ex- 
ceptions in  the  realm  of  nature,  and 
rejoices  in  every  case  whereof  science 
is  still  unable  to  explain  the  physical  or 
mental  facts ;  he  hopes  to  find  super- 
natural signs  of  a  better  reality  in  the 
gaps  of  the  causal  world.  The  belief 
in  our  freedom  and  responsibility  and 
God's  almightiness  seems  then  to  de- 
pend upon  the  shortcomings  of  the 
scientist,  and  must  go  in  fear  of  every 
new  scientific  discovery.  But  science 
is  then  the  first  to  suffer  in  this  con- 
flict, as  the  needs  of  the  heart  prove 
stronger  than  all  the  doctrines  of  the 
schools,  and  all  the  proud  theories 
fall  asunder  when  life  demands  its 
own.  And  yet,  believe  me,  this  con- 
flict can  never  arise  if  the   meaning 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE        9 

and  purpose  of  science  is  rightly  in- 
terpreted. 

Science  is  an  instrument  constructed 
by  human  will  in  the  service  of  human 
purposes.  It  is  a  valuable,  reliable,  and 
indispensable  instrument;  but  it  is,  like 
any  instrument,  an  artificial  construc- 
tion, which  has  meaning  only  in  view 
of  its  purpose.  In  doing  our  life's 
work,  in  fulfilling  our  duties,  we  have 
to  act,  and  our  actions  deal  with  the 
things  that  surround  us.  It  is  a  chaos, 
that  world  of  things,  in  which  we  can- 
not act  if  we  do  not  bring  order  into 
it.  I  must  know  what  the  thing  in  my 
hand  will  do  if  I  handle  it ;  how  it  will 
change.  If  I  bring  it  in  contact  with 
other  things,  will  it  move,  or  burn,  or 
melt ;  will  it  change  color  or  make  a 
noise ;  will  it  hurt  me,  or  will  it  feed 


io       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

me  ;  will  it  blossom,  or  will  it  explode  ? 
What  we  have  to  expect  from  the  ob- 
ject, we  call  the  effect ;  and  that  which 
we  have  in  hand  then  becomes  the 
cause.  In  this  way  the  scientist  con- 
nects the  things  of  this  chaotic  world 
in  an  orderly  system  of  causes  and 
effects  which  follow  one  another  ;  and, 
as  he  can  do  his  work  only  if  he  takes 
forgranted  that  the  end  can  be  reached, 
he  considers  the  world  of  objects  as  a 
system  in  which  everything  must  be 
understood  as  the  effect  of  causes. 
The  scientist  thus  cannot  reach  his 
goal  save  in  shaping  and  moulding 
and  transforming  the  whole  world  in 
thought  till  everything  can  be  under- 
stood as  a  part  of  such  a  chain  of 
causes  and  effects.  It  sounds  surpris- 
ing, and  yet  this  postulated  system  is 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       n 

the  only  universe  which  the  scientist 
studies. 

This  universe  is  no  longer  the  origi- 
nal experience  ;  the  things  of  the  world 
had  to  be  changed  over  and  over  again 
till  the  human  intellect  could  form  a 
connected  system  out  of  the  chaos. 
For  the  burning  wood  I  see  here,  the 
chemist  substitutes  chemical  mole- 
cules ;  for  the  chair  my  hand  touches, 
the  physicist  posits  trillions  of  atoms; 
for  the  movement  of  this  spark  in  the 
fireplace,  he  calculates  innumerable 
components ;  for  its  red  light,  he  uses 
ether  waves  that  are  dark  ;  and  for  the 
sound  of  my  voice,  air  waves  that  are 
silent.  Everywhere  the  scientist  sub- 
stitutes something  else  for  the  real 
experience,  and  yet  he  finds  that  only 
by  such  substitution  can  he  determine 


12       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

beforehand  what  will  happen  ;  only  by 
such  transformations  of  reality  can  he 
construct  a  system  of  causes  and  ef- 
fects, and  thus  foresee  the  changes 
of  the  things.  Whatever  serves  this 
purpose  of  causal  connections  we  call 
scientific  truth,  and  every  progress  in 
the  history  of  science  has  been  a  new 
success  in  changing  the  world  of  things 
over  into  a  chain  of  effects  and  causes, 
which  have  reality  merely  in  the  ab- 
straction of  the  scientist. 

I  know,  my  friend,  that  to-day  you 
are  not  in  the  mood  to  follow  such 
dry  disputations,  and  yet  if  you  take 
these  few  difficult  steps  with  me,  you 
will  stand  at  once  at  a  point  where  you 
see  the  whole  field  before  you.  Two 
consequences  you  can  no  longer  avoid. 
Firstiy^the  truth  of  science  does  not 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       13 

express  the  reality  in  which  we  live. 
Or  course,  it  serves  our  real  life,  other- 
wise it  were  an  empty  fancy;  and  it  is 
worked  up  from  real  experience,  other- 
wise it  were  a  dream.  But  it  remains 
an  artificial  construction  whose  right 
and  value  do  not  go  beyond  the  pur- 
pose for  which  it  was  fabricated.  What 
a  hopeless  distortion,  to  magnify  it 
into  a  philosophy  and  religion,  and  to 
ask  science  for  the  ultimate  meaning 
of  reality  ! 

But  more  than  that.  You  under- 
stand, secondly,  that  no  science  of  the 
universe  can  say  anything  about  our- 
selves, who  make  the  sciences.  Of 
course,  if  the  scientist  starts  to  trans- 
form the  world  of  things  into  a  system 
of  enchained  causes  and  effects,  he 
must  be  consistent,  and  finally  apply 


14      THE    ETERNAL   LIFE 

the  same  tools  of  thought  to  his  own 
personality.  He  must  then  consider 
himself  as  a  body  which  works  like  a 
machine,  and  all  his  inner  life  as  hap- 
penings in  a  special  part  of  the  ma- 
chine, in  the  brain.  All  the  ideas  and 
imaginations,  feelings  and  emotions, 
go  on  then  in  the  brain  just  as  it  rains 
and  snows  in  the  outer  world,  and  our 
own  will  is  then  the  necessary  product 
of  its  foregoing  causes.  Such  consist- 
ency is  admirable  in  its  realm,  but  it 
must  not  make  us  forget  that  its  realm 
is  determined  by  our  own  decision, 
yes,  that  it  is  our  own  free  will  which 
decides  for  a  certain  purpose  to  con- 
ceive ourselves  as  bound,  our  will  as  a 
causal  process.  There  is  thus  no  con- 
flict between  the  claim  of  science  that 
we  are  mental  mechanisms  bound  by 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       15 

law  and  the  claim  of  our  self-con- 
sciousness that  we  are  free  personali- 
ties. >  In  reality  we  are  free,  and  in 
our  freedom  we  have  an  interest  in 
thinking  of  ourselves  as  mechanisms. 
In  reality  we  are  that  which  we  know 
ourselves  to  be  in  our  practical  life,  — 
subjects  which  take  free  attitudes,  and 
not  simply  objects. 

I  see  a  bright  response  in  your  eyes, 
my  friend,  —  am  I  right  in  supposing 
that  your  quick  intelligence  sees  how 
everything  else  must  follow  from  this 
central  point  ?  Do  you  grasp  already 
the  vital  truth  tKat  our  life  is  lived  in 
time  only  so  far  as  we  see  ourselves 
as  such  causafm>jects,  but  that  it  is 
beyohd'lfime  in  the  reality  of  our  im- 
mediate  life  ?  The  personality  which 
shapes  the  objects  in  its  thought  ere- 


16      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

ates  not  only  the  conception  of  cau- 
sality, but  in  that  same  act  the  form  of 
time  which  is  to  embrace  all  causal 
processes  of  the  world.  Fast,  present, 
and  future  mean  simply  attitudes  of 
the  personality  toward  its  objects. 
We  call  present  the  objects  which  we 
attend  to,  and  future  the  objects  which 
we  are  expecting  as  effects  of  the  pre- 
sent ones,  and  past  the  objects  which 
we  conceive  as  causes  of  the  present 
ones.  But  the  personality  which  thus 
creates  by  its  attitudes  the  idea  of  time 
as  form  of  its  objects  is  not  itself  ban- 
ished into  the  prison  of  time.  To  ask 
what  time  the  real  personality  itself 
fills  is  not  more  reasonable  than  to  ask 
whether  the  will  is  round  or  square, 
how  many  pounds  it  weighs,  and  what 
its  color  may  be.   The  real  personality, 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       17 

the  subject  of  will  and  thought,  is  not 
an  object  in  time,  as  it  is  itself  the  con- 
dition of  time.  Its  whole  reality  lies 
in  its  attitudes  and  in  its  acts ;  it  can- 
not be  perceived  like  a  thing,  but 
must  be  understood  in  its  meaning 
and  aims ;  it  cannot  be  explained  by 
causality,  but  must  be  interpreted  and 
appreciated ;  it  cannot  be  measured, 
but  must  be  valued ;  it  is  not  in  the 
world  of  things  which  we  find,  but  in 
a  world  of  actions  and  judgments 
which  are  performed.  The  meaning 
of  our  real  personality  is  thus  not  to 
be  a  phenomenon  for  ourselves  or 
others,  but  to  be  a  will  whose  acts  are 
valid  for  ourselves  and  demand  the 
acknowledgment  of  others.  Our  per- 
sonality reaches  another  directly  — 
But  no,  —  I  fear  your  approving 


18       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

countenance  means  that  you  think  I 
want  to  defend  a  mystical  belief  in 
telepathy  or  spiritualism.  This  time 
you  misunderstand  me  utterly.  Do 
you  not  see,  my  friend,  that  the  mystic 
who  craves  for  telepathic  and  similar 
wonders  seeks  the  essence  of  our  life 
still  in  the  world  of  things  in  space 
and  time  ?  He  hopes  to  overcome 
the  limitations  of  that  world  of  things 
by  breaking  the  chain  of  causality,  by 
making  exceptions  here  and  there,  by 
linking  together  in  a  mysterious  way 
objects  which  are  far  from  one  another 
in  time  and  space.  He  does  not  see 
that  we  have  projected  our  experiences 
into  time  and  space  just  because  we 
sought  to  bring  order  and  law  and  cau- 
sality into  the  chaos,  and  that  we  undo 
our  own  work  if  we  destroy  the  order 


THE   ETERNAL    LIFE       19 

which  we  created  and  allow  mystery 
in  place  of  strict  causality.  In  the 
world  of  space  and  time  there  cannot 
be  any  exceptions_tq_the  laws  ^oTcause 
and  effect,  and  a  mystic  event  is  simply 
an  event  which  has  not  yet  found  its 
proper  explanation. 

When  I  said  that  we  as  personali- 
ties reach  each  other  immediately,  I 
did  not  mean  that  my  thought  as 
function  of  my  brain  —  that  is,  as  a 
process  in  the  world  of  phenomena 
— jumps  mysteriously  over  to  your 
brain.  I  meant  rather  that  if  you  and 
I  are  talking  here  absorbed  in  serious 
thought,  we  do  not  come  in  question 
for  each  other  as  scientifically  con- 
structed bodies  in  which  some  mental 
states  succeed  one  another  in  time, 
but  merely  as  real  personalities  which 


20       THE    ETERNAL    LIFE 

try  to  understand  one  another.  Our 
mutual  interest  forms  a  direct  will- 
connection,  and  that  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  causal  connection  which 
certainly  exists  between  us  if  we  care 
to  consider  ourselves  as  objects  in  the 
sphere  of  space  and  time.  In  that 
case,  of  course,  our  thoughts  and  our 
feelings  are  just  passing  phenomena 
which  come  in  time  one  after  the 
other ;  but  in  reality  they  are  judg- 
ments, attitudes,  volitions,  which  bind 
one  another  by  their  meaning,  with- 
out relation  to  time  and  succession. 
Whether  I  think  of  myself  and  of  my 
aim  to  awake  your  interest  for  the 
creed  of  philosophy,  or  whether  I 
think  of  you  and  your  aim  to  follow 
the  paths  of  religious  emotions,  or 
whether  I  think  of  our  common  grief 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       21 

and  our  common  memory  of  our 
friend,  —  in  every  case,  my  expe- 
rience is  made  up  of  acts  which  are 
bound  together  by  the  unity  of  pur- 
pose.  The  one  act  refers  to  the  other, 
the  one  means  the  other,  the  one  in- 
volves the  other.  If  we  are  here  in 
serious  discussion,  we  do  not  play  the 
explaining  psychologist  who  asks  what 
thought  came  by  causal  laws  after  what 
other  thought,  how  many  seconds  the 
emotion  lasted,  how  many  minutes  the 
development  of  the  ideas,  —  no,  you 
and  I  ask  ourselves  what  your  atti- 
tude toward  life,  what  my  view  means, 
and  how  we  agree  and  disagree  ;  how 
those  intentions  hang  together  in  theii 
ends,  and  how  far  one  act  binds  us  tc 
accept  the  other.  They  follow  from 
each  other  as   the    equations   of  the 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

mathematician  follow  from  each  other : 
how  needless  to  ask  in  what  time- 
order  they  are  related !  Has  our  talk 
here,  has  our  whole  life,  any  meaning 
if  we  seek  its  reality  in  such  time- 
succession  ? 

Do  we  not  mean  by  time  an  order 
in  which  the  reality  of  one  member 
excludes  the  reality  of  all  the  other 
members  ?  Only  one  time-instant  is 
real,  and  the  reality  of  the  present  ex- 
cludes the  reality  of  everything  which 
precedes ;  the  past  must  have  become 
unreal  when  the  present  is  real,  and 
the  existence  of  the  present  must  have 
become  unreal  when  the  future  will  be 
real.  Of  course,  the  scientist  needs 
this  self-devouring  time,  for,  as  I  said, 
time  is  to  him  the  form  of  causality, 
and  causality  indeed  demands  that  the 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       23 

effect  shall  become  real  through  the 
disappearance  of  the  causes.  As  we 
scientists  must  think  of  the  world  of 
objects  as  a  causal  chain,  we  must  con- 
ceive it  as  a  world  in  time  in  which 
new  and  ever  new  existing  objects  fol- 
low one  another  just  to  disappear  in 
the  next  instant  into  the  past ;  that  is, 
into  irrevocable  unreality.  If  we  take 
ourselves  and  our  friends  as  causal  ob- 
jects, then  indeed  nothing  but  the  pre- 
sent instant  of  our  existence  has  real- 
ity, while  all  our  living  and  striving 
up  to  the  present  moment  has  been 
completely  destroyed  by  having  be- 
come a  thing  of  the  past.  Our  whole 
life  has  then  become  unreal  at  the  mo- 
ment of  death,  and  then,  of  course,  we 
must  put  all  our  desires  into  the  hope 
for  a  future,  near  or  far,  in  which  some- 


24      THE    ETERNAL   LIFE 

thing  worth  while  shall  become  real 
again.  Time  has  taken  away  and  made 
unreal  everything  which  gave  value  to 
our  lives  ;  no  wonder  that  we  look  out 
to  see  whether  time  cannot  bring  us 
again  a  piece  of  reality  after  death  or 
in  a  billion  of  years. 

And  yet,  my  friend,  is  there  really 

any  value  whatever  in  such  a  life,  short 

6r  long  or  endless,  if  we  conceive  it  as 

jsuch  a  mere  series  of  phenomena  in 

/time?  Is  life  worth  living  for  two  heart- 

/  beats  long,  if  all  that  we  experience  in 

/  the  fiFsFTias  become  non-existent,  and 

/    thus  unreal,  in  the  second  ?    Is  life  still 

/     life  if  its   contents  follow  as  passive 

events,  each  one  destroyed  by  the  next, 

each  one  just  passing  by  in  a  momentary 

existence  ?    What  can  be  gained  if  this 

meaningless  procession  of  shadows  is 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       25 

to  go  on  in  us  for  a  thousand  times  a 
thousand  centuries  ?  The  mere  exten- 
sion in  time  cannot  add  any  new  value 
or  dignity.  It  is  not  different  from 
extension  in  space.  If  you  were  get- 
ting taller  and  taller,  growing  up  to  the 
highest  mountain,  stretching  up  to  the 
moon,  on  to  the  farthest  star,  reaching 
with  your  arms  around  the  whole  phy- 
sical universe,  would  that  give  you  any 
new  value  ?  Would  you  not  yearn  for 
the  narrow  room  where  you  might  sit 
again,  man  with  man,  to  fulfill  your 
daily  duties,  as  they  alone  give  mean- 
ing to  your  life  ?  A  mere  expansion, 
a  more  and  more  of  phenomena  in 
space  and  time,  is  a  valueless  amass- 
ing of  indifferent  and  purposeless 
material. 

How  far  otherwise  if  we  emancipate 


26      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

ourselves  from  this  unnatural  view 
and  apperceive  our  life  as  act  and  not 
as  object,  as  creator  of  time  and  not  as 
a  chance  occurrence  in  time !  As  to 
this,  my  real  personality,  it  is  mean- 
ingless to  ask  myself  what  came  be- 
fore or  what  will  come  after  it.  The 
objects  of  my  personality  have  the 
cause-relation  an3  time-length,  but 
my  real  personality  itself  has  no  causes 
and  has  no  place  in  time.  It  does  not 
fill  more  or  less  time,  just  as  it  is  not 
more  or  less  in  weight ;  and  nothing 
can  come  after  it,  just  as  there  is  no- 

i thing  to  its  right  or  to  its  left.  My 
life  as  a  causal  system  of  physical  and 
psychical  processes,  which  lies  spread 
out  in  time  between  the  dates  of  my 
birth  and  of  my  death,  will  come  to 
an  end  with  my  last  breath ;  to  con- 


THE    ETERNAL    LIFE       27 

tinue  it,  to  make  it  go  on  till  the  earth 
falls  into  the  sun,  or  a  billion  times 
longer,  would  be  without  any  value,  as 
that  kind  of  life  which  is  nothing  but 
the  mechanical  occurrence  of  physio- 
logical and  psychological  phenomena 
had  as  such  no  ultimate  value  for  me 
or  for  you  or  for  any  one  at  any  time. 
But  my  real  life  as  a  system  of  inter- 
related will-attitudes  has  nothing  be- 
fore or  after,  because  it  is  beyond  time. 
It  is  independent  of  birth  and  death, 
because  it  cannot  be  related  to  the 
biological  events ;  it  is  not  born  and 
will  not  die ;  it  is  immortal ;  all  pos- 
sible thinkable  time  is  inclosed  in  it : 
it  is  eternal. 

Again,  I  beg  you  not  to  think,  here, 
of  any  mystical  revelation.  I  do  not 
speak  of  a  visionary  existence  to  which 


28       THE    ETERNAL   LIFE 

we  may  lift  ourselves  in  the  inspira- 
tion of  a  holiday  hour,  and  which  is 
far  removed  from  our  daily  humble 
life  with  its  hardships  and  its  pleasures. 
Metaphysical  dreams  and  doubtful 
speculations  cannot  help  us  when  we 
seek  convictions  on  which  we  are  to 
base  all  that  is  valuable  in  our  life. 
The  more  we  separate  our  life  of  ideal- 
istic belief  from  the  practical  reality 
between  morning  and  evening,  the 
more  we  deprive  our  daily  life  of  its 
inner  dignity  and  force  it  to  the  super- 
ficial hopes  of  an  external  hereafter. 
I  certainly  do  not  think,  when  I  speak 
of  our  timeless  will-life,  of  anything 
which  is  different  from  our  practical 
doing  in  our  quiet  home  or  on  the 
noisy  market,  in  the  circle  of  friends, 
or  in  the  turmoil  of  the  world.    It  is 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE       29 

the  life  which  you  and  I  live  every 
day,  and  the  only  life  of  which  the  his- 
torians tell  us.  The  question  is  thus 
not  whether  you  are  gifted  with  a  won- 
derful intuition  to  grasp  in  yourself 
the  hidden  germ  of  a  higher  reality. 
No,  you  cannot  live  through  any  act 
of  your  life  without  knowing  yourself 
as  such  a  free  and  timeless  agent.  All 
our  social  and  political  life,  our  scien- 
tific and  artistic  endeavor,  our  law  and 
religion,  involves  such  freedom ;  and 
where  acts  are  in  question  in  their  free- 
dom, they  are  not  looked  at  under  the 
naturalistic  aspect  of  causality.  It  was 
only  this  category  of  causality  that 
forced  them  into  the  Procrustean  bed 
of  time. 

Just  this  our  good  friend  felt  in  his 
inmost  heart,  as  he  had  the  fullest  and 


30      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

finest  understanding  for  the  spirit  of 
true  history.  I  remember  still  every 
word  of  a  fine  talk  which  he  and  I  had 
last  June  on  a  beautiful  summer  even- 
ing at  the  seashore.  He  had  just  been 
reading  much  of  Buckle  and  Spencer 
and  Comte  and  of  the  more  modern 
positivists  and  sociologists.  He  had 
needed  the  material  for  an  address  he 
wanted  to  deliver  on  the  task  of  the 
historian,  and  he  came  to  me  to  talk  it 
all  over.  Oh,  he  felt  so  wearied,  he 
said,  as  if  he  had  walked  through  a 
desert  into  which  the  flourishing  land- 
scape of  history  had  been  transformed. 
No  doubt,  he  exclaimed,  we  can  treat 
the  whole  world's  history  and  the 
struggles  of  the  nation  and  the  devel- 
opment of  individual  great  men  as  if 
it  were  all  nothing  but  a  big  causal 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      31 

mechanism,  wherein  everything  is  un- 
derstood when  it  is  explained,  and 
wherein  the  natural  factors  of  race 
disposition  and  climate,  of  market  and 
food,  determine  fate.  Of  course,  for 
certain  purposes  we  must  do  so,  and 
must  demand  of  dry,  stubborn  laws 
that  they  express  the  richness  of  five 
thousand  years  of  history.  Then  it  is 
necessity  which  turns  the  crank  of  the 
historical  machine  to  produce  ever  new 
repetitions.  But  all  this  is  after  all 
merely  natural  science :  the  spark  of 
history  is  quenched. 

To  the  eye  of  history  man  is  not  a 
thing  which  is  moved,  but  a  creator 
in  freedom,  and    the    whole  world's 


nistory  is  a  story  of  mutual  will-in- 
nuences.  If  I  study  history,  I  am 
doing  it  to  understand  what  the  will- 


32       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

demands  of  living  men  mean.  I  stand 
before  an  endless  manifoldness  of  po- 
litical and  legal  and  social  and  intel- 
lectual will-demands  from  the  people 
with  whom  I  come  in  contact.  Each 
one  compels  acknowledgment,  each 
one  demands  agreement  or  disagree- 
ment, obedience  or  combat,  and  my 
whole  historical  life  is  just  the  chain 
of  my  attitudes  towards  those  will- 
demands.  I  have  to  respect  the  laws 
of  my  country,  the  political  existence 
of  other  nations,  the  customs  and  con- 
victions of  my  time ;  I  have  to  choose 
between  political  parties  and  scientific 
theories  and  aesthetic  schools  and  re- 
ligious denominations ;  I  have  to  sym- 
pathize with  reforms  and  to  fight  crimes. 
And  yet  those  individuals  who  repre- 
sent the  claims  of  the  country  or  the 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       33 

rights  of  other  people  or  the  theories 
of  the  schools  have  not  invented  the 
demands  with  which  they  approach 
me.  Each  one  of  their  demands  re- 
fers again  to  the  demands  of  their  pre- 
decessors and  their  ancestors.  The 
whole  historical  configuration  of  our 
politics  and  law  and  science  and  art 
and  religion  is  thus  a  system  of  will- 
demands  which  asks  for  our  free  de- 
cision, but  which  in  itself  points  back- 
ward at  every  point  to  other  subjects 
of  will,  and  these  others  again  refer  to 
others.  This  whole  mighty  system  of 
will-reference  is  what  we  call  human 
history. 

Thus  we  talked  it  over  for  hours, 
and  it  was  a  delight  to  listen  to  his 
enthusiasm  for  the  thought  of  such 
men  as  Carlyle    and    Emerson,    and 


34      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

above  all  of  the  great  Fichte,  as  he 
contrasted  it  with  the  positivistic  su- 
perficiality which  he  had  found  in  the 
sociological  books.  I  remember  well 
how  he,  late  that  night,  left  my  piazza 
with  the  laughing  words,  "  Believe 
me,  from  the  pair  in  the  Paradise 
of  old  to  the  eighty  millions  in  our 
new  Paradise,  the  world's  history 
means  the  will-connections  of  free  per- 
sonalities." 

I  know  his  vivid  harangue  gave 
me  much  to  think  of,  and  I  saw  how 
his  view  of  history  was  in  full  accord 
with  my  ideas  of  natural  science.  We 
seek  in  both  cases  to  understand  the 
reality  to  which  we  have  to  submit 
ourselves  and  towards  which  we  take 
attitudes.  Now  this  reality  is  twofold  : 
we  have  objects  and  we  have  other 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE       35 

subjects  in  our  world.  The  objects  we 
must  know  because  they  are  useful  or 
harmful  to  us ;  and  the  subjects  we 
must  know  because  they  approach  us 
with  their  demands  for  agreement  or 
disagreement.  But  if  we  really  want 
to  know  what  the  objects  are  to  us,  we 
must  find  out  what  we  have  to  expect 
from  them,  and  we  thus  consider  them 
as  causes  and  effects.  On  the  other 
hand,  as  to  the  subjects,  if  we  want  to 
understand  them,  we  must  find  out 
what  is  involved  in  their  demands. 
This  does  not  mean  that  we  ask  for 
the  facts  which  we  have  to  expect ;  if 
we  did  so,  we  should  be  making  things 
out  of  personalities.  No,  we  want  to 
find  what  is  contained  in  a  given  pro- 
position, political  or  legal,  scientific 
or  artistic,  economic  or  religious.    To 


36       THE    ETERNAL   LIFE 

ask  what  is  involved  means,  as  our 
friend  so  rightly  insisted,  to  ask  what 
will-demands  of  other  fellow-beings 
are  approved  or  disapproved  in  this 
demand.  Just  as  the  naturalist  passes 
from  the  given  thing  to  ever  new 
expected  effects,  so  the  student  of  per- 
sonalities passes  from  the  given  de- 
mand to  other  and  yet  other  subjects, 
whose  will-demands  were  involved  and 
acknowledged  or  thwarted  in  the  pre- 
sent attitude.  That  leads  him  to  ever 
new  subjects,  and  that  whole  network 
of  will-relations  is  history.  But  it  is 
clear  that  we  then  come  in  question 
historically  only  in  so  far  as  we  are  such 
subjects  of  attitudes,  and  that  all 
which  we  are  doing  in  our  economic 
or  social,  in  our  political  or  legal,  in 
our  aesthetic  or  scientific  life  is  then 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE       37 

done  in  a  form  of  existence  which  can 
be  expressed  only  in  terms  of  will. 

If  you  say  that  you  are  an  Ameri- 
can or  a  Christian,  an  economic  free- 
trader or  an  aesthetic  realist,  an  ad- 
mirer of  Shakespeare  or  an  adherent 
of  Beethoven,  a  sympathizer  with  the 
Japanese  or  a  leader  of  municipal  re- 
form, a  student  of  Plato  or  a  member 
of  your  Thursday  Club,  it  is  your 
daily,  it  is  your  hourly,  life  of  which 
you  give  account,  and  yet  each  func- 
tion is  nothing  else  than  the  set  of 
your  will-attitudes  in  agreement  or 
disagreement  with  will-tendencies  of 
others  who  approach  you  with  their 
demands  for  imitation  and  approval. 
Your  whole  practical  existence  thus 
continually  resolves  itself  into  new  at- 
titudes towards  other  centres  of  voli- 


38       THE   ETERNAL    LIFE 

tion,  and  you  are  related  then  to 
Shakespeare  or  JHatoT"not  otherwise 
than  to  your  friends  in  the  Club.  The 
whole  meaning  of  your  existence  thus 
lies  merely  in  will-relations  which  are 
to  be  understood  and  interpreted,  but 
which  have  lost  their  significance  when 
taken  as  causes  and  effects  and  thus 
treated  as  successive  phenomena.  If 
you  agree  or  disagree  with  the  latest  act 
of  the  Russian  Czar,  the  only  signifi- 
cant relation  which  exists  between  him 
and  you  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
naturalistic  fact  that  geographically  an 
ocean  lies  between  you,  and  if  you  are 
really  a  student  of  Plato,  your  only 
important  relation  to  the  Greek  phi- 
losopher has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
other  naturalistic  fact  that  biologically 
two  thousand  years  lie  between  you. 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      39 

Of  course,  if  you  want  to  describe  and 
explain  your  connection  with  the  Czar 
or  with  Plato,  you  must  take  account 
of  those  miles  and  of  those  calendar 
years  which  lie  between.  But  for  the 
historical  meaning  of  this  phase  of 
your  life,  that  aspect  of  description 
has  no  significance.  That  which  the 
naturalist  accounts  for  as  spatial  or 
temporal  distance  then  becomes  a 
characteristic  distribution  and  order  of 
will-influences.  That  Plato's  life  lies 
temporally  far  behind  you  means  then 
for  your  real  historical  will  that  Plato 
makes  demands  on  you,  but  that  you 
do  not  make  demands  on  Plato,  and 
that  you  feel  yourself  influenced  by  a 
multitude  of  personalities  which  them- 
selves show  the  influence  of  Plato. 
It  is  thus  not  enough  to  say  that 


4o       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

from  the  highest  point  of  view  thou- 
sands of  years  may  be  grasped  in  one 
act  and  may  thus  appear  to  us  in  in- 
spired moments  like  one  present  ex- 
perience in  which  the  whole  chain  of 
successive  temporal  acts  is  perceived 
at  once,  just  as  in  listening  to  music 
we  may  grasp  at  once  in  one  span  of 
consciousness  the  successive  tones  of 
the  whole  musical  phrase.  We  should 
then  see  classical  times  and  mediaeval 
times  and  yesterday  and  to-day  in  one 
glance,  just  as  we  might  see  in  a  bird's- 
eye  view  the  various  places  along  a 
road  over  which  we  have  wandered 
slowly.  But  no,  in  such  a  case  each 
place  still  keeps  its  space-extension, 
and  one  lies  beside  the  other,  and 
just  so  each  historical  event  would 
still    keep   its    time-relation    and    its 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      41 

place  in  a  successive  chain,  even  if  we 
could  look  on  all  of  them  in  one  span 
of  consciousness.  The  truth  is,  as  I 
said,  that  they  really  have  not  any 
time-extension,  and  that  they  really 
do  not  come  one  after  the  other,  and 
that  thus,  however  many  we  may 
glance  at  together,  we  falsify  their  char- 
acter in  constructing  them  as  such  a 
temporal  series.  Their  whole  reality 
lies  merely  in  their  free  agreement  or 
disagreement  with  other  will-attitudes, 
and  fills  as  such  neither  a  second  nor 
a  century.  The  practical  life  does  not 
ask  the  question,  how  long  a  time  or 
when  our  will  shall  go  on,  but  merely 
the  question  what  is  to  be  affirmed  and 
what  is  to  be  rejected.  It  has  no  du- 
ration and  no  predecessor  and  no  suc- 
cessor, just  as  it  has  no  corners  and 


42      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

no  outlines,  no  taste  and  no  smell ;  it 
has  nothing  but  the  purpose,  and  is 
thus  in  every  phase  timeless,  without 
beginning  and  without  end. 

If  you  insist  on  metaphors,  I  should 
liken  our  will  to  a  circle ;  a  circle  has 
no  beginning  and  it  has  no  end ;  it  is 
endless,  infinite.  If  you  go  forward  in 
the  circle,  you  land  just  where  you 
came  from  ;  before  and  after  are  iden- 
tical. Thus  in  our  will-act  the  end 
which  we  try  to  reach,  and  which  we 
expect  as  lying  before  us,  must  be 
given  to  us  in  advance,  otherwise  it 
were  no  will;  and  while  we  realize  it, 
we  appreciate  it  as  our  own  purpose 
just  because  we  started  from  this  pur- 
pose. It  is  one  act,  the  will-act,  in 
which  the  purpose  becomes  real,  and 
yet  that  which  we  aim  at  is  identical 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      43 

with  that  which  we  start  from;  the 
end  which  we  expect  as  lying  before 
us  and  the  purpose  from  which  we 
started  as  lying  behind  us  must 
always  be  identical  in  every  will :  fu- 
ture and  past  coincide  in  the  present 
will  like  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
the  circle.  And  yet  all  this  is  merely 
a  metaphor.  It  indicates  merely  that 
our  idea  of  time  is  destroyed,  future 
and  past  become  identical  as  soon  as 
we  venture  on  the  hopeless  task  of 
expressing  the  real  meaning  of  will  in 
the  form  of  time.  Then  we  do  wiser 
to  leave  the  field  to  psychology.  The 
psychologist  can  really  give  us  a  tem- 
poral picture  of  the  will,  for  he  does 
not  care  to  deal  with  the  true  histori- 
cal man,  but  substitutes  for  him  the 
organism  and  its  functions,  and  offers 


44      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

us  instead  of  the  will  the  actions 
of  the  organism  and  its  accompani- 
ments among  the  mental  phenomena. 
Then  the  will  becomes  of  course  a 
describable  and  explainable  series  of 
successive  events  of  which  each  one 
takes  its  little  time.  But,  my  friend, 
the  meaning  is  gone,  the  value  of  the 
will  evaporates,  it  is  not  really  any 
longer  the  will  which  we  are  willing, 
it  is  nothing  but  the  will  which  we 
are  perceiving,  like  the  snowflakes 
there  outside  of  the  window  pane. 

You  ask  what  is,  then,  after  all,  the 
value  of  such  a  real  life  ?  Even  if  it  is 
"independent  of  time,  why  is  its  eternal 
timeless  reality  more  valuable  than  the 
passing  events  in  the  physical  world  of 
objects?  What,  then,  does  value  mean  ? 
I  do  not  hesitate  to  reply  that  your 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE      45 

question  itself  gives  you  the  answer. 
You  ask  your  question  for  the  pur- 
pose of  finding  the  truth,  —  what  does 
it  mean  to  find  truth  ?  Is  truth  merely 
an  idea  glowing  for  an  instant  in  your 
mind  like  the  sparks  here  in  the  fire- 
place before  us  ?  No,  you  seek  truth 
in  your  questioning  because  the  truth 
of  the  idea  means  that  you  respect  it, 
that  you  feel  the  truth  as  something 
which  is  an  end  in  itself,  something 
which  is  absolute,  something  which 
demands  submission.  It  does  not  al- 
low any  further  question  as  to  whether 
or  not  it  is  useful  for  something  else, 
but  it  is  itself  the  end  of  all  question- 
ing. Only  that  which  is  such  an  ulti- 
mate end  for  us  is  really  a  value.  Yet 
truth  is  certainly  not  the  only  value  to 
which  we  submit  our  will.    The  com- 


46      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

plete  perfection  of  the  beautiful,  the 
moral  deed,  the  intellectual  achieve- 
ment, the  work  of  civilization,  the  re- 
ligious faith,  the  repose  of  philosophi- 
cal conviction,  —  each  is  such  an  end 
in  itself,  which  we  respect  as  final.  But 
the  fact  that  truth  and  beauty,  morality 
and  culture,  religion  and  philosophy 
demand  our  submission,  that  we  re- 
spect them  as  something  which  needs 
no  further  purpose,  means  that  they 
are  more  than  our  individual  personal 
experiences.  They  satisfy  our  own 
will,  but  we  then  know  our  will  as  at 
the  same  time  more  than  an  individual 
volition ;  our  own  will-acts  are  to  us 
then  expressions  of  an  absolute  will. 

Again,  my  friend,  T  beg  you  not  to 
mistake  me  as  speaking  of  a  holiday 
world  which  condemns  all  that  we  en- 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      47 

joy  and  attributes  value  with  puritan- 
ical austerity  merely  to  that  which 
demands  the  self-denial  of  our  whole 
personality  and  the  suppression  of  our 
instincts.  Nothing  lies  farther  from 
my  mind.  The  absolute  values  are, 
as  I  said,  certainly  not  confined  to  our 
own  actions.  The  simplestbeautiful  or- 
nament has  its  perfection,  the  simplest 
mathematical  equation  has  its  validity, 
the  least  progress  of  civilization  is  an 
achievement,  and  all  love  and  friend- 
ship has  its  complete  value.  Our 
whole  world  is  thus  overspun  with 
values  which  have  in  themselves  no- 
thing to  do  with  our  actions  and  simply 
demand  our  faithful  assent.  That  truth 
is  more  valuable  than  error,  that  beauty 
is  more  valuable  than  vulgarity,  that 
harmony  of  souls  is  more  valuable  than 


48       THE    ETERNAL   LIFE 

discord,  that  civilized  life  is  better  than 
savagery,  all  this  stands  independent  of 
the  further  value  of  the  honest  action 
as  over  against  the  dishonest  one.  Of 
course  the  value  of  our  action  is  linked 
with  all  those  other  values  of  the  world 
inasmuch  as  it  is  a  demand  of  moral- 
ity that  whenever  we  are  acting  we 
shall  create  values.  Whenever  we 
think,  we  ought  to  think  the  truth, 
whenever  we  choose,  we  ought  to  pre- 
fer the  perfect  and  the  beautiful,  we 
ought  to  secure  harmony  and  happi- 
ness and  progress.  But  at  first  we 
must  have  faith  in  all  those  values  be- 
fore we  can  acknowledge  them  as  goals 
of  our  moral  action. 

It  seems  as  if  there  were  a  chaos  of 
values,  and  yet  I  do  not  think  that  it 
is  out  of  the  question  to  bring  order 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      49 

into  that  abundance  of  absolute  aims. 
You  know  I  am  not  a  philosopher, 
and  I  should  not  dare  to  play  the  role 
of  the  systematic  metaphysician,  and 
yet  I  cannot  help  here,  too,  having 
my  own  thoughts.  I  think  there  are 
four  large  groups  of  values  which  re- 
fer  to  the  four  fundamental  attitudes 
of  our  will  towards  the  world.  We 
submit  ourselves  to  the  world,  or  we 
approve  the  world,  or  we  demand  a 
change  in  the  world,  or  we  demand 
something  beyond  the  world.  Of 
course  we  can  do  that  from  our  merely 
individual  standpoint ;  you  or  I  may 
approve  the  given  thing  as  we  like  it 
and  as  its  taste  pleases  us,  but  that  is 
nothing  more  than  a  sensual  enjoy- 
ment ;  and  we  may  approve  a  certain 
change  because  it  is  useful   for  our 


5o      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

personal  profit ;  or  we  may  go  beyond 
our  experience  in  a  personal  supersti- 
tion. On  such  paths,  of  course,  there 
lies  no  absolute  value.  You  or  I,  on 
the  other  hand,  might  submit  or  ap- 
prove or  believe  with  the  meaning 
that  this  act  of  ours  is  not  for  us  as 
individuals  here  in  these  chairs  and  be- 
fore this  fireplace ;  that  it  belongs  to 
every  personality  with  whom'  we  can 
share  at  all  our  world  of  thought  and 
feeling  and  will,  that  every  one  ought 
to  submit  and  to  enjoy  and  to  approve 
and  to  accept  what  our  will  aims  at. 
Then  the  purpose  of  our  will  takes 
indeed  the  character  of  an  absolute 
value  and  that  to  which  we  submit  then 
means  for  us  the  absolute  validity  of 
knowledge,  and  that  which  we  approve 
as  it  is  given  means  the  absolute  per- 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       51 

fection  of  harmony  and  beauty,  and 
that  which  we  approve  as  change  means 
the  achievement  of  morality  and  law 
and  civilization,  and  that  which  we 
believe  in  gives  the  absolute  com-  , 
pleteness  of  religion  and  philosophy. 
Well,  all  this  sounds  musty  and 
abstract,  and  this  hour  is  not  the  time 
to  show  to  you  how  in  my  deepest 
thoughts  all  those  scattered  values 
hang  together.  For  indeed  I  do  think 
that  they  are  all  expressions  of  the 
same  principle.  Over-individual  value 
is  given  to  our  will  in  everything 
which  we  can  acknowledge  as  identi- 
cal with  itself.  Our  causal  knowledge 
seeks  identities  of  cause  and  effect, 
our  historical  knowledge  seeks  identi- 
ties of  aims,  our  logical  knowledge 
seeks   identities    of  propositions ;    in 


52      THE  ETERNAL  LIFE 

sympathy  we  have  identities  of  desire, 
in  art  we  have  identity  between  the 
whole  ancl  the  part,  in  progress  we 
have  identity  between  the  purpose  and 
the  realization,  in  morality  we  have 
identity  between  will  and  action,  in 
religion  we  have  identity  between  the 
world  and  its  superstructure,  in  philo- 
sophy we  seek  the  identity  between 
the  world  and  its  substructure ;  in 
short,  wherever  we  posit  something 
identical,  there  we  find  an  ultimate  end, 
something  in  which  our  will  rests, 
something  which  has,  therefore,  ab- 
solute value.  And  why  does  our  will 
rest  in  identity,  and  can  never  rest 
until  it  finds  identity  ?  Certainly  be- 
cause that  is  the  very  meaning  of  will 
itself.  The  identity  of  purpose  and 
realization  expresses  the  whole  signifi- 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE       53 

cance  of  the  will,  and  as  we  are  will, 
only  identity  in  the  world  can  have 
for  us  absolute  value. 

I  beg  your  pardon,  my  friend ;  my 
thoughts  have  ranged  too  far.  I  was 
grasping  for  deeper  problems  which 
lie  beyond  the  simple  hour  of  serious 
talk.  Your  thoughts  have  left  me  in 
my  solitary  wandering  and  have  gone 
back  to  the  dear  memory  of  our  friend; 
but  pray  mark  that  which  is  after  all 
alone  important  to  me,  that  nothing 
has  value  for  us,  that  there  is  no  truth 
and  no  perfection  and  no  progress  and 
no  eternity  but  in  that  world  which  is 
given  to  our  will  and  in  which  we  our- 
selves are  will ;  that  all  values  are  lost 
forever  when  our  actuality  is  elimi- 
nated, when  we  become  the  passive 
spectator  of  the  world,  and  the  world 


54       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

itself  thus  becomes  a  series  of  objec- 
tive phenomena. 

In  our  temporal,  causal  world  there 
is  not,  and  there  cannot  be,  anything 

'"Ofreal  value^^auseey^j.yjthing  comes 
to  view  as  the  cause  of  something  else, 
and  nothing  is  an  end  in  itself.  fThe  \ 

"clay  may  be  valuable  because  you  can 
make  bricks  from  it ;  and  those  bricks 

.valuable  because  you  can  make  houses 
from  them ;  and  the  houses  valuable 
because  they  protect  the  human  body ; 
and  the  human  body  is  valuable  be- 
cause it  preserves  the  nation  ;  and  the 
nation  is  valuable  because  it  preserves 
the  human  race ;  and  the  human  race 
is  valuable  —  why,  I  do  not  know.    In 

"Tffitt  temporal  order  of  things  that  hu- 
man race  may  fall  into  the  sun,  or  a 
comet  may  overturn  the  whole  earth, 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       55 

—  why  are  the  atoms  of  the  universe 
not  just  as  good  if  they  go  on  without 
that  swarming  humanity  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  earth-planet ;  why  was  the 
earth  not  just  as  good  before  that 
surface  protoplasm  grew  into  human 
shape  ?  Who  has  the  right  to  say  that 
one  combination  of  atoms  is  better 
than  another  ?  —  it  perhaps  produces 
a  special  effect,  but  why  is  that  effect 
better  than  another  ?  In  that  temporal 
world  there  is  no  good  and  bad^no 
value  and  no  ideal,  but  merely  a 
change  in  complication.  If  people 
carelessly  speak  of  development,  they 
really  mean  a  change  to  greater  and 
greater  differentiation ;  but  the  end 
of  the  so-called  development  is  not 
better  than  the  beginning,  as  in  that 
world   nothing  is  valuable   in   itself. 


56      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

ralues  are  found  merely  in  the  world 
of  subjects.  But  there  values  have  re- 
ality, because  our  will  assumes  attitudes 
in  which  ultimate  ends  are  acknow- 
ledged and  respected,  —  they  are  good 
in  themselves,  they  are  absolute  val- 
ues, they  give  to  life  that  which  makes 
it  worth  living :  and  these  subjects 
and  their  acts  are  real  outside  of  caus- 
ality and  time,  valid  in  the  world  of 
eternity. 

And  now,  my  friend,  speak  for 
yourself :  What  can  you  and  what  can 
I  desire  for  ourselves  and  for  our  chil- 
dren as  the  fulfillment  of  our  warmest 
hopes  ?  Those  absolute  values  of  truth 
and  morality,  of  beauty  and  complete- 
ness, are  over-personal  ideals ;  but 
what  can  we  desire  for  ourselves  as  in- 
dividual personalities  ?  If  we  are  really 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE      57 

will,  and  thus  outside  of  time,  there  is 

-^™ — — ■ |..L '      I ■  ||     I.    ..  .■JMJM   1.1.1.       _.         I     .   Ijlll   ■Ifl^P 

no  longer  any  meaning  in  the  desire 
Tor  a   protracted   duration,   this   one 

"^*" — '"  '  '  -  -     ■  1 1 11T  ■— iiim— fiiini(imi,iiijT;i 

hope  in  which  the  open  and  the 
masked  materialists  find  themselves 
together.  The  only  longing  which  can 
be  a  personal  desire  of  the  real  sub- 
ject must  speak  again  the  language  of 
the  will  and  not  that  of  phenomena. 
A  will  can  never  strive  for  more  space 
and  time,  but  only  for  more  signifi- 
cance and  influence  and  value  and  sat- 
isfaction. Our  will  is  significant  if  it 
involves  and  absorbs  as  much  of  the 
will-attitudes  of  others  as  possible;  it 
has  influence  if  its  demands  determine 
the  free-will  decisions  of  others,  and  it 
has  value  if  it  realizes  through  itself  the 
over-individual  absolute  values,  that 
is,  if  it  creates  truth  and  beauty,  hap- 


58      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

piness  and  progress,  law  and  morality 
and  religion.  And  the  significance 
and  the  influence  and  the  value  of 
our  will  are  finally  held  together  by 
our  longing  for  complete  satisfaction, 
which  is,  after  all,  but  another  name  for 
the  perfect  harmony  of  all  our  will- 
actions.  No  endless  duration  is  our 
goal,  but  complete  repose  in  the  perfect 
satisfaction  which  the  will  finds  when 
it  has  reached  the  significance,  the 
influence,  and  the  value  at  which  it  is 
aiming. 

This  aim  itself  is  different  for  every 
one  of  us,  and  it  is  just  this  difference 
which  gives  us  our  personal  practical 
individuality.  Each  one  aims  toward 
significance  by  responding  to  partic- 
ular influences.  They  may  come  to 
us  through  friends  or  through  books, 


THE   ETERNAL    LIFE       59 

through  the  customs  of  our  nation  or 
through  the  nature  which  surrounds 
us,  through  church  and  state,  through 
school  and  family.  And  each  one  him- 
self again  aims  at  particular  influences. 
No  one  desires  to  control  with  his  will 
state  and  art,  science  and  law,  music 
and  technique,  his  country  and  the 
antipodes,  his  generation  and  the  thou- 
sandth generation  after  his.  You  are 
this  man  just  because  you  confine 
yourself  to  will  this  work  and  not  to 
do  God's  work  all  over  the  world ; 
and  every  one  aims  towards  particular 
actual  values,  and  lives  to  his  own 
chosen  ideals.  But  no  life  would  mean 
to  us  the  life  of  a  personality  in  which 
the  will  does  not  aim  towards  some 
significance,  towards  some  influence, 
towards  some  value,  and  finally  to- 


60       THE    ETERNAL   LIFE 

wards  the  happiness  of  complete  sat- 
isfaction in  the  harmonization  of  his 
aims  and  of  his  experience.  You  have 
never  wished  anything  else  for  your- 
self, you  cannot  have  wished  anything 
else  for  our  friend. 

Each  one  of  us  is  more  than  merely 

■nil       '     -  '""  I  ....     mi    mm  .1         1     ' 

an  individual.  The  norms  of  the  good 
and  the  beautiful  and  the  true  and 
the  religious  are  our  own  deepest  aims 
and  attitudes,  but  we  will  them  not  as 
individuals.  They  are  our  will-acts 
only  in  so  far  as  we  are  absolute  sub- 
jects, in  so  far  as  our  consciousness  is 
the  over-individual  consciousness,  the 
oversoul.  Its  will-attitudes  working 
in  us  determine  the  constitution  and 
the  meaning  and  the  value  of  the  world 
which  we  as  individuals  find  as  given 
to  us,  and  to  whose  laws  and  obliga- 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE       61 

tions  we  as  personalities  have  to  sub- 
mit. In  so  far  as  we  are  such  oversoul, 
our  aim  can  never  find  complete  sat- 
isfaction in  any  finite  experience.  Its 
completeness  of  realization  lies  in  the 
absolute  totality  of  the  world,  to  which 
every  individual  belongs  through  its 
particular  intentions,  but  whose  real- 
ization endlessly  transcends  the  aims 
of  any  individual.  The  self-realization 
of  our  oversoul  can  thus  never  be  our 
desire  as  practical  individuals,  and  no 
disappointment  and  no  sadness  be- 
longs to  the  fate  of  the  individual  in 
failing  to  complete  in  itself  the  aims 
of  the  over-individual  will.  If  that 
were  the  aim  of  the  personality,  it 
would  flow  over  into  the  absolute  and 
would  lose  every  meaning  of  indi- 
viduality.   For  us  in  so  far  as  you  and 


62      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

I  are  not  the  same,  as  we  are  not  the 
one  absolute  Oversoul,  but  are  differ- 
ent and  unique,  all  our  desires  have 
thus  a  meaning  only  when  they  refer 
to  those  will-attitudes  in  us  which  have 
the  particular  limited  historical  affilia- 
tions. 

Outside  of  time,  and  thus  eternal, 
is  our  individual  will  no  less  than  our 
oversoul  will ;  but  while  our  absolute 
personality  can  find  harmonization  of 
its  aims  merely  in  the  totality  of  the 
world,  our  individual  personality  never 
seeks  and  never  longs  for  another  com- 
plete set  of  facts  than  through  the  sig- 
nificance, the  influence,  and  the  value 
which  belong  to  the  particular  histori- 
cal situation.  A  personality  which  has 
found  complete  satisfaction  of  its  aims 
has  no  possible  further  intention,  and 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       63 

it  would  be  meaningless  to  attach  to 
it  externally  a  supplement  of  indi- 
vidual existence.  The  life  which  we 
live  in  the  world  of  eternity  has  no 
possible  other  measure  than  that  of  its 
significance,  its  influence,  and  its  value. 
If  in  those  directions  the  aim  is  ful- 
filled, our  life-work  is  so  completed 
that  we  should  become  disloyal  to  our- 
selves and  should  deny  the  meaning 
of  our  particular  individuality  if  we 
were  aiming  towards  influences  which 
do  not  belong  to  us  and  towards  a  sig- 
nificance to  which  we  have  no  right; 
in  short,  if  we  demand  more  than  this, 
our  particular  life. 

In  this  sense  we  have  not  even 
the  right  to  translate  the  hope  for 
individual  endless  duration  from  the 
sphere  of  phenomena  into  the  sphere 


64      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

of  will-relations.  In  the  sphere  of 
phenomena  it  deprived  our  life  of 
every  meaning  and  value.  If  we  were 
to  substitute  for  that  empty  thought 
of  a  continuation  of  time  the  deeper 
thought  of  an  endless  personal  influ- 
ence of  will,  endless  not  in  time  but 
endless  in  personal  relations,  it  would 
seem  as  if  we  had  really  expressed 
an  ultimate  goal.  Something  like  this 
gave  life  to  the  old  ideas  of  the  trans- 
migration of  souls,  but  even  that  un- 
canny thought  mostly  took  the  form 
that  each  new  life  of  the  old  soul 
was  conceived  as  beginning  anew,  not 
knowing  anything  of  its  own  past  and 
thus  without  any  inner  unity  and  with- 
out any  consciousness  of  continuous 
personality.  The  very  thought  of  this 
break  in  recollection  expresses  clearly 


THE   ETERNAL    LIFE       65 

that  we  are  no  longer  personalities  if 
our  individuality  is  not  limited.  If  it 
seriously  hopes  for  an  unlimited  ex- 
pansion of  its  will-influence  and  its 
will-significance,  the  individual  would 
completely  transform  itself  into  the 
over-individual  absolute ;  our  over- 
soul  would  throw  off,  our  mstoncally 
^_giyen  personality,  and  you  and  I  would 
not :  mourn  here  for,,  pur  friend  if  we 
believed  that  he  and  you  and  I  are  \    / 

nothing   but  the  one  same  absolute  V 

■inrnirWi"1   "'■l'l^"*"'f*"' ******       *   ""***  """"  "*H>nm._ 

Oversoul.     Our  limitation  makes  us 


individuals  and  gives  meaning  to  our 
particular  striving.  All  hopes  which 
guide  us  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave 
can  refer  merely  to  the  complete  har- 
monization of  our  aims  for  our  limited 
significance,  our  limited  influence,  and 
our  limited  realization  of  values.  With 


J 


/ 


66       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

that  work  completed  or  uncompleted 
we  stand  in  eternity. 

And  yet  who  dares  to  speak  the 
word  "  uncompleted  "  ?  Are  the  in- 
fluences of  our  will  confined  to  those 
impulses  which  work  directly  and  with 
our  knowledge  on  the  nearest  circle 
of  our  neighbors  ?  Will  not  our  friend, 
who  left  us  in  the  best  energy  of  his 
manhood,  influence  you  and  me  and 
so  many  others  throughout  our  lives, 
and  what  we  gained  from  his  noble  mind 
—  will  it  not  work  through  us  further 
and  further,  and  may  it  not  thus 
complete  much  of  that  which  seemed 
broken  off  so  uncompleted  ?  And  yet 
who  dares  to  speak  the  word  "  com- 
pleted "  ?  Do  not  our  purposes  grow, 
does  not  in  a  certain  sense  every  new 
significance  which  our  will  reaches  aim 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       67 

towards  new  influences,  does  not  every 
newly  created  value  give  us  the  desire 
for  further  achievement,  is  our  par- 
ticular will  really  ever  completely  har- 
monized ?  Is  our  life  work  really  ever 
so  completely  done  that  no  desire  has 
still  a  meaning?  And  yet  does  not 
even  that  thought,  with  all  its  indi- 
vidual sadness  of  discord,  add  to  the 
significance  and  to  the  value  of  our 
eternal  being  ? 

In  eternity  lies  the  reality  of  our 
friend,  who  will  never  sit  with  us  again 
here  at  the  fireplace.  I  do  n^^  think 
that  I  should  love  him  better  if  I 
hoped  that  he  might  be  somewhere 
waiting  through  space  and  time  to 
meet  us  again.  I  feel  that  I  should 
then  take  his  existence  in  the  space- 
time  world  as  the  real  meaning  of  his 


68      THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

life,  and  thus  deprive  his  noble  per- 
sonality of  every  value  and  of  every 
ideal  meaning.  The  man  we  love  was 
not  in  space  and  time ;  he  fought  his 
TTFe  of  strife  and  achievement  as  a  sub- 
ject which  calls  not  for  our  perception 
with  its  standards  of  causality,  space, 
and  time,  but  for  our  interpretation 
with  its  standards  of  agreement,  of 
values,  of  ideals.  We  know  him  as  a 
subject  of  his  will,  and  thus  as  a  per- 
fect part  of  the  real  world  in  its  eter- 
nal fitness  of  valid  values.  He  lived 
his  life  in  realizing  absolute  values 
through  his  devotion  to  truth  and 
beauty,  to  morality  and  religion.  You 
and  I  do  not  know  a  reality  of  which 
he  is  not  in  eternity  a  noble  part ;  the 
passing  of  time  cannot  make  his  per- 
sonality unreal,  and  nothing  would  be 


THE    ETERNAL   LIFE       69 

added  to  his  immortal  value  if  some 
object  like  him  were  to  enter  the 
sphere  of  time  again.  The  man  whom 
we  love  belongs  to  a  world  in  which 
there  is  no  past  and  future,  but  an 
eternal  now.  He  is  linked  to  it  by  the 
will  of  you,  of  me,  of  all  whose  will 
has  been  influenced  by  his  will,  and  he 
is  bound  to  it  by  his  respect  for  abso- 
lute values.  In  a  painting  every  color 
is  related  to  the  neighboring  colors, 
and  it  belongs  at  the  same  time  to  the 
totality  of  the  picture ;  in  the  sym- 
phony every  tone  is  related  to  the 
nearest  tones,  and  yet  belongs  to  the 
whole  symphony.  But  when  the  sym- 1 
phony  or  the  painting  is  perfect,  then 
most  of  all  we  do  not  wish  the  one 
beautiful  color  to  sweep  over  the  whole 
picture,  or  the  one  splendid  tone  to 


70       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

last  through  the  whole  music.  We  do 
not  desire  the  tone  of  this  individual 
life  to  last  beyond  its  internal,  eternal 
role,  throughout  the  symphony  of  the 
Absolute  ;  its  immortality  is  its  perfect 
belonging  to  that  whole  timeless  real- 
ity, belonging  there  through  its  human 
relations  to  its  neighbors,  and  through 
its  ideal  relations  to  the  ultimate  values. 
See,  even  these  ashes  of  the  wood 
which  burns  in  the  fireplace  are  made 
up  of  atoms  which  will  last  through- 
out all  future  time  ;  I  do  not  long  for 
that  repulsive,  intolerable  endlessness 
which  we  should  have  to  share  with 
those  ashes.  They  are  in  time,  and 
can  never  escape  the  tracks  of  time, 
and  however  long  they  may  last,  there 
will  be  endless  time  still  ahead  of  them. 
We  are  beyond  time ;  our  hope  and 


THE   ETERNAL   LIFE       71 

our  strife  is  eternally  completed  in  the< 
timeless  system  of  wills,  and  if  I  mourn 
for  our  friend,  I  grieve,  not  because 
his  personality  has  become  unreal  like 
an  event  in  time,  but  because  his  per- 
sonality as  it  belongs  eternally  to  our 
world  aims  at  a  fuller  realization  of  its 
intentions,  at  a  richer  influence  on  his 
friends.  This  contrast  between  what 
is  aimed  at  in  our  attitude  and  what  is 
reached  in  our  influence  is  indeed  full 
of  pathos,  and  yet  inexhaustible  in  its 
eternal  value.  We  ought  to  submit  to 
its  ethical  meaning  as  we  submit  to  the 
value  of  truth  and  beauty  and  duty 
and  sanctity.  It  belongs  to  the  ulti- 
mate meaning  of  each  of  us;  through 
our  aims,  through  our  influences, 
through  our  relations  to  the  aims  of 
our  fellows  and  to  the  ideals  of  the 


72       THE   ETERNAL   LIFE 

Absolute,  and,  finally,  through  these 
pathetic  contrasts  between  aims  and 
influences  we  enter  as  parts  into  the" 
^absolute  reality,  —  not  for  calendar 
years  and  not  for  innumerable  aeons, 
but  for  timeless  eternity. 


n, 


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EUctrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  b*  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mast.,  U.  S.  A. 


REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  759  545     7 


